


after you

by evil bunny wolf (evil_bunny_king)



Series: Perihelion [2]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, curtis hoyle (mention) (I love that man)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 23:25:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15375726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil%20bunny%20wolf
Summary: He speaks into the darkness between them:It wasn't war. Not as we knew it.He tells her about the assassinations, the mission. He tells what he decided and didn't decide to do and his hand in hers shifts and tightens, anchored in the covers between them.I killed an innocent man,he says through the dark.I dug out the bullet and disposed of the body. That's what Madani wanted to know.And does she?A pause. She hears him take a breath, steadying it, in and out.Yeah. Yeah, she does.--There are good days and there are bad days. Frank keeps on coming over.





	after you

**Author's Note:**

> Direct continuation of Perihelion because I'm a SUCKER
> 
> Will I stop quoting 'My Bubba' songs in fic titles? (nah)

The evening sinks closer to morning. The two of them remain in her living room: Karen curled into the sofa and Frank propped against it, on the floor, the back of his head tipped against her thigh. She’s not certain when they’d stopped speaking. The quiet thickens to the hum of the aircon, the drag of streetlights through her blinds.

She draws her fingers through his hair, just lightly. The military cut is growing out, again, the ends long enough to hint a curl around her fingers. She remembers when she first saw him again. She wonders if he’ll regrow the beard - it was different, but she could get used to it, she thinks. She would get used to it.

She glances down and he’s looking up at her, eyes dark with the bruises surrounding them.

He blinks when she catches her, glancing down, but then turns his head towards her thigh, eyelids fluttering closed. She takes the silent request and resumes, trailing her fingers to the curve of his ear, careful of the almost healed lines by his temple.

“I should go,” he says, eventually. He isn’t quite close enough, but the skin of her knee tingles as if she could feel his breath across it.

“Take the couch.” She tugs on his hair, just lightly, and he tilts his head with it.

“Okay,” he says, easily enough.

Only then does she draw her hands away, settling them onto the more neutral space of the couch. Her heart is fluttering a little in her chest, too fast and that little bit too hard, but she ignores it and starts to unfold herself from her seat. She almost knocks a beer bottle to the floor. He stays there until her feet hit the carpet, and then he’s up and carting the recyclables to the box by the door, as if he’s been here more than just once before. Her chest hurts in a way that makes her smile.

She finds her feet and the spare sheets and they pull out the sofa bed together.

She doesn't think he'll be gone before the morning. She hopes he won't be gone before the morning.

She curls into bed with her back to the door, comforter to her chest, and listens for him, through the closed door to the living room.

 

-

 

“So, where does that leave you, Frank?”

He's on the edge of her couch, held together by little more than bruises and healing stitches. He takes an unsteady breath and she watches his hands - the uneven knuckles, the skin dry to the point of cracking; blunted nails. She watches his eyes: the press of bone around the hollows, how the bruises change around them.

“I don’t-”

 

\--

 

He’s still here.

He stays for a coffee and they talk, about one thing or another, and before he leaves he passes a hand over the roses on the side table again.

She could say she didn’t watch for him out the window when he leaves, but she does. She follows the smudge of his cap down the street and around the corner before she sinks into her couch, pressing her fingertips against her smile.

 

\--

 

The next time she sees him the bruises are gone, save for the hint of yellow over his cheekbones. He looks - healthier, is a word for it. He leans against the back of the bench she's sitting on, looking out towards the bridge.

Except he’s in a hoodie despite the lingering heat, hood pulled up and over the cap low over his eyes. Except she remembers the first time they came here - Grand Ferry Park in early afternoon, her lunch hour sacrificed so she could sit two feet from the man she hadn't been able to forget and Frank - Frank bronzed by the light, his gaze switching between her and the files in her hands.

It's different, here and now - she knows that. Tonight he leans against the bench long enough to let her know that it's him before he swings around to sit down beside her, elbows on his knees. Tonight she has nothing for him but herself.

“Hey,” he says after a moment, gaze flicking towards her and then away again, across the river.

“Hey.” She smiles and leans towards him - not quite until she could touch him, like she wants to, but enough. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“I should say that.”

She gets his meaning - his face still shows up on national news, albeit a footnote to the political and international storms brewing across the globe. He’d have a point, if he wanted to try for it. He doesn't. Which is good; she doesn’t feel like taking any bullshit tonight.

“That officer, Mahoney,” he says instead. "He eased off?”

“I was the one hounding _him_ actually, for a while there. I think he's glad to see the back of me.”

Frank twitches his head over towards her, an old reflex. “Think he's guessed why you laid off?”

She shakes her head. “It was something else, actually. An impossible missing person’s case. Needed something to get my mind off- everything.

“I knew you were alright though; Madani gave me that much.”

The corners of his mouth quirk. “Madani, huh? Guess I should’ve expected that.” His grin escapes his attempts to tamp it down and he looks back out towards the river. “So you two are now- what? Best-buds?”

She twists in her seat to watch him, cocking her elbow against the back of the bench. “What would you say if I told you we were spin buddies?”

He snorts. “Can’t say I’d put it past you.”

She laughs. “Yeah, well.” She sits back, feeling the chill of the evening through her blouse. She and Madani - were a work in progress. There wasn't much more to say than that. “We’ll see.”

He looks at her from the side of his eye, taking her in - reading something or maybe nothing in her expression - and leaves it at that.

The traffic and the last of the commuters pass a distance behind them, an undulation of noise, the susurrus of the city. She can still hear the river, though: the splash of the water against the tide barriers, the wake of the ferry slowly making its way towards Williamsburg bridge.

She takes the chance to look at him; really look.

“How are you, Frank?” she asks.

He glances at her that little bit too quickly, and then down at his hands. He worries the fingers of his right hand, just above the knuckles. They’re rough, maybe that little bit swollen, and she can hazard a guess why. “I'm alright, Karen. I’m as alright as I could be.”

She nods, slowly, and feels the stick of her throat when she swallows. _And the Liebermans?_

She doesn’t ask. She lets him hunt down the words, in his own time.

Frank tilts his head and considers what he’s going to say before he says it. “I’ve got this friend, Curt. He runs a vet group at this local church in Queens. I’ve been, a few times.”

She blinks, nods, and smiles. Good. That’s good.

“They know?”

He casts his head to the side, looks back at her. “They get it, Karen.”

She nods, and manages a smile. “It helps?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think it does.” Another pause. “Hell if I know what I’m doing, but Curtis, he tells me to keep coming, so I might listen, for once.” His eyes slide towards her. “You’d like him. He never takes my shit.”

“I think I would.” The name twigs a memory, something from the aftermath of Lewis’ attacks - a name she'd wrangled from another reporter. “Curtis - Hoyle, is it? I think he’s ignored a couple of my emails.’

That startles a laugh out of him. “I bet. How'd you find him?”

“His name came up after Lewis,” she says, and considers him before she finishes; it's a puzzle piece she's guessed but not confirmed: "Something about a bomb being strapped to his chest.”

Frank's expression darkens, his mouth thinning until it could almost be a sneer. “Yeah. Yeah, he has that kind of luck. Got a bullet a week later, too."

“I heard about that.”

“I bet you did.” there's a smile there, but it's brief, quickly submerged back into the quiet, edged expression she's familiar with but can't read.

A gull lands a few feet away, squawking as it squares up against an empty chip packet. The water breaks on the barrier.

“Curt and I, we go way back.” Frank worries at his fingers again, rubbing the broken skin around his knuckles. “Marines. We went through the shit together; I owe him my life at least three times over, he’s patched me up so many times. I, uh,” and he looks at her a little askance, a look that she can’t quite read but definitely suspects, “we, uh, connected again after everything last year. I was a dead man. He helped me with it, helped me get a job - for all the good it did the two of us.” He laughs. “But yeah, he put up with my wallowing ass. He still puts up with it.”

“He sounds like a good man.”

“Yeah, he is.”

It makes sense, fitting into the gap between now and a year ago. There is still that tenderness between them about that night in the woods - a conversation they hadn’t quite had.

Frank is looking at her again. “I uh, I never really asked you about Murdock."

She lets out a breath and twists back towards the river, her hand raising towards her chin and then away, to clench in her lap. He shouldn't have caught her by surprise. She's had a long time to deal with the mess of grief and anger and _hope_ that she felt around Matt Murdock.

"Didn't ask about a lot of things, actually," Frank continues, his eyes still on her. "Been a bit of a uh, self-absorbed dick, as Curt phrases it."

She laughs and takes a breath that she forces steady. "There were some extenuating circumstances, but yeah, yeah you have."

**Author's Note:**

> Update Jan 2019: I've been editing this and the ending is now pending, sorry...! Cut it short so I can finish rewriting it; will include in next chapter.
> 
> This feeds nicely into _a rhythm of sinking soul_ (that mushy disaster of a fic) - I haven't given up on it yet :) Technically, actually, it also fits into _Places we don't know_ \- that's what I had in mind when I started. Let's see how it turns out...!


End file.
